To hear greatness in its germinal stage is intoxicating. Bookending the festival, San Francisco's The New Up was all prickly erogenous zones and contemporary disquiet. The quintet channels the future-forward zeitgeist of Radiohead, Lake Trout (who they covered), Talking Heads, and TV on the Radio. Singer E.S. Pitcher is a dizzying blur of hips and lips, seductive as memory with the sharp tang of the lash -- a thoroughly modern frontwoman that's actually a woman, and not some whiney little girl.

Superb, tight playing fuels a compellingly varied approach broad enough to rope in tweakers, hippies, and library bound indie kids. Subtle electronics and processed flute scuttle predictability, and while their predominantly compact compositions avoid bloated excess, there are enough guitar tangents to appeal to Pavement and Ween fans. They take the slinky flexibility and slippery genre sense of the jam scene and give it razor sharp teeth.

Singing about how "lonely machinery distracts us from our lives," there's a sense of giddy desperation in their sound that feels downright prophetic. Cute as hell in a scruffy sort of way, the New Up have the makings of a "Next Big Thing." They're a Luaka Bop band waiting to happen, a tastemaker cooked up from a recipe book of their own design -- funky and frightening, intimate and anthemic, switched-on in every lil' way.

The Brakes

Good songs rocked with sincerity are always appealing, and two major sources of both this year were Mississippi's Shady Deal and Philadelphia's The Brakes. Sounding like boys who grew up with Widespread Panic playing in their cribs, Shady Deal are rough like steel-cut oats, filling and hard and probably really good for you. Take a spoonful and you'll taste the metal-accented guitars and barley-hard vocals. Take another and you'll pick up a '50s Sun Studio flavor filtered through vintage Lynyrd Skynyrd. The specter of old blues, full of foreboding and dry earth roughness, permeates things. Pretty it ain't, but it sure feels real. Shady Deal has an unabashed affection for what's come before. The tunes are catchy as shit and they look just like a bunch of wild-eyed, rock lovin' southern boys should. I'd see 'em again anytime.

Less hard but more tunefully nuanced, the Brakes reminded us of how good pop music can be. No wheels are being reinvented but, man alive, these boys roll with harmonious ease. To be honest, I expect very little from a band I'd first heard on an H & R Block Tax Cuts TV commercial (they're responsible for the ear-worm "Sometimes You Make Me Feel Special!"). I was going to skip them altogether, but walking past I heard something with the juicy bop of Matthew Sweet, later Replacements, and the Posies. There's a bouncy push to the clean vocals and exceedingly youthful energy. Lines like "Maybe it was you that put a little chill in my wind" linger, and they've got big enough ears to pull out an obscure Traffic classic like "Empty Pages."

People at High Sierra actually sit and listen to the quiet music. What a concept! Musicians can whisper, tentatively bringing their soul out into the light and mountain air, and audiences hush up. It's strikingly different than most festivals and speaks to the abiding love of music that fills this place.

Tom Freund

My "quiet moment" was a Sunday-morning service from the Tom Freund Trio. Completely unfamiliar with Freund, I heard a more honeyed version of Steve Earle's voice telling me to take my troubles and drop them in the deep blue sea. On stage, they blended acoustic guitar, hand percussion, stand-up bass, and surprisingly melodic harmonies. Addressing a crowd spread out lazily on the grass, Freund said, "I'm gonna play stuff to help me wake up, too. Y'all look pretty worked." By the fourth day of recreational chemistry and near non-stop stimulation, his music was a balm to the spirit.

By the third song, I realized that Freund is a treasure trove to be mined for emotionally satisfying gems, a future staple of mix CDs and lonely, late nights. Only afterwards did I discover Freund is a longtime collaborator of Ben Harper and Victoria Williams, a man that Graham Parker calls "the best singer-songwriter operating today." The songs speak for themselves: quality heaped upon quality, small worlds vibrating with all the good and bad stuff that fills a day. Call it vibrant verisimilitude or, more crudely, mighty real shit. His lyrics are the kind you write down because a part of you realizes you've just heard the truth. A couple favorites were: "I'm not going to show you where I keep my sanctuaries/Because you'll come in with your tractors and put up your shopping malls" and "I'm gonna lay down my weary blues like a barnstorming plane to your bedroom."

Aided by blues marvel David Jacobs-Strain for much of the set, Freund offered up tunes that the wind or rain might write -- natural and graceful, filled with organic fury and non-homogenized love. In reaction to the police shakedowns that occurred throughout the weekend, he delivered a pointed, oh-too-timely cover of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" that snarled far more than any of the recent high ticket priced CSNY reunions. You can place Freund in the stellar company of John David Souther, Michael Martin Murphey, David Wilcox, John Gorka, and Neal Casal -- songwriter's songwriters who help us process the daily grind in ways that leave us guardedly hopeful about what lies ahead.

And that's what this weekend was all about. For any minor quibbles about programming, there's little doubt that High Sierra is the friendliest, most diverse, and downright hospitable music festival in the West -- and, quite likely, in the whole United States. They craft a safe, beautiful, freedom-loving oasis that hums with musical promise. If the fates allow, I'll be back every year.